How to "Hide" an Electrical Outlet | DIY

Hey!  Hello!  Guten Tag!  

It's been a minute.

We are getting nicely settled into the new normal that having a baby brings about and, while I can't say each day is highly organized and all of the gears shift together, I can say that...well, organization is for the birds at this point and I'm not even sure all the gears are here.  Hahahaha...hahaha...ha...like I said, new normal. 

This new normal has allowed for some quick and easy projects (emphasis on quick and easy) and one of those involves painting baseboards. You might remember that we laid new floors last Thanksgiving.  They're still awesome and we still love them but we don't love the baseboards above them that we just haven't gotten around to painting...until last week, when I started the process in the dining room. 

 

I'm slightly ashamed of how long they've been the yellowy-beige color (we bought the house with them this color) but really only slightly.  Baseboards aren't one of those things you first notice when walking into a home and so I guess I've really relied on that fact...or at least lied to myself and gotten away with it.  ;)

Either way, the dining room baseboards finally look fresh in Pure White by Sherwin-Williams and match the ceilings and crown moulding.  Side note:  If I could go back in time, I would have planned to paint them to match the wall color.  I've felt myself drifting towards painting all trim to match the wall color lately but I pre-painted the base shoe moulding before we installed it after the flooring went in and I really don't like spending time painting trim (it's the worst) so I'm not going to go back and repaint everything.  Maybe some other day in the far future.  What do you think?  Are you team moulding is all the same color, different from the wall color or paint them both to match?  Maybe it depends on the room...

While I was painting the baseboards though, my eyes crash-slammed into the electrical outlets in the room.  

And maybe that's a little dramatic but look at them!  They look horrible!  The outlets themselves still need to be swapped out with fresh white ones...or maybe they don't.  You see, several months ago when I was researching trying to hunt down dark gray outlets and covers to match the gray paint on our kitchen peninsula (p.s. they don't exist), I came across these paintable outlet covers*.  Not only can you paint them to match the color of the wall they're on, but they cover up the outlet behind them so there would be no need for us to do all of that tedious electrical work swapping out outlets.

Two days later, a'painting I was during naptime.  

I have a pack of these paintbrushes* I use all the time for wall touch-ups and things so I grabbed one, our wall paint (China White by Ben Moore color-matched to Valspar paint), and had these outlet covers (and the screws!) painted in under ten minutes.

During a few minutes of the next naptime, I simply unscrewed the old outlet covers and screwed these on in their place.

Ta-da!  The eye just glazes over them now, no?

They sit flush with the old outlet and even though they add a millimeter, maybe two, of plastic a plug has to rest on when plugged in, everything we've plugged in still works normally.  Cost-wise, these costs us just over $2 per cover.  Brand new outlets are a little cheaper ($1-3) but we'd have to go white plus there's the time it would have taken to swap each outlet out so we're winning on that end too.  And, one more thing - I mentioned that I found these when looking for outlets on our peninsula.  I ended up buying one back then, painted it to match, and there is nary a scratch to been seen on it to this day.  So, I knew these were winners in the holding paint department.

If you've been staring down old outlets that need to be swapped out with new or even have new that you don't like standing out because outlets aren't one of those things you want to be noticed, we highly recommend covering them up with these paintable outlet covers!  Get to it!  :)

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